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Originally posted by Samueul:

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I think it is safe to say he is getting help. Are you willing to attack another country for one terrorist mastermind?
YES! Holy fuck YES! Isn't that the point! Whoever is helping him NEEDS to be attacked but I guarantee you the people that are helping him and the likes of him are the ones we wouldn't dare touch *cough* Saudi Arabi *cough*. Besides we attacked another country under bad intelligence to dispose of someone who had no teeth to begin with....Why stop there?
No. That is NOT the point. We can't just attack any country at random because we may think Bin Laden may be hiding out there.

If we did have actionable intelligence as to a definite location of Bin Laden, there are other ways we can deal with him and his immediate cronies without attacking a country.

Are you actually serious with some of the stuff you have been writing? eek

I remember about a year or so ago there was a report that there was actionable intelligence regarding his location at a funeral for some Taliban or high ranking Al Qaeda member, but a Pentagon DOD lawyer supposedly canceled the strike to kill him. If I recall, the reason given was that women and children were also at the funeral.

Unfortunately, DOD lawyers are running a lot of the war on terror and making many of the decisions for the most part. Not the generals. That is what this country has come down to in many respects. Not all decisions, but many. Sometimes decisions are made based on how those decisions will play out in the Hague.

You're the one concerned about international reputation, so that is the price we are paying to international reputation. Appeasing the Hague.

I doubt OBL is in Saudi Arabia. There is no way he could hide there without us knowing about it. He is most likely either in Waziristan (uncontrollable mountainous regions of Pakistan), Iran, South America, or Kashmir.

I don't like the Saudi's any more than you do, but we can't just attack them. Our economy is based on petroleum and we just couldn't do that even if we wanted to. Unfortunately our economy is going to be linked to petroleum long after your children are older than you are right now.

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We may not know where Bin Laden is, but I can tell you we aren't looking for him in any real capacity. Our troops in Afghanistan are basically doing the same they are doing in Iraq, being dicked around by politics and putting their lives on the line for naught, only they are doing it in a much smaller force.
I'd say that is false. We are doing the best we can as far as looking for him. He is not in Afghanistan so our troops can turn over every single table and probably not find him. He is a coward. He would not be hiding anywhere that there are American forces nearby.

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The bulk of our military and our war on terror should be scouring Afhanistan and Pakistan for the bastard and his entire family should be sitting in a cell somewhere being waterboarded. We actually know who and where they are. Instead we are in another country under bad intelligence wasting valuable resources all the while killing our world image and destroying our own citizens faith in their nation.

Our politicians are inept, and they are using hammers when they should be using scapels..
I disagree that we should capture his entire family. They are not all terrorists. He has an extremely large family. Some of them actually are terrorists, but I would say most are not. I think a few are right here in the United States. Some are in Europe too.

I agree that our intelligence agencies are highly problematic. The mistakes they have made over the years are tremendous.

Unfortunately politics seems to be playing too much of a role in deciding what is or has been an intelligence mistake and what is not. Intelligence seems to be a matter of political expediency of late.

Time will tell what turns out to be correct. Let's hope that our intelligence failures don't continue to kill thousands of our own citizens. It doesn't look promising because no one seems to ever get fired regardless of the failures or regardless of the lives lost due to their failures.